Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 67, No. 3. Whole No. 388, March 1976

Crazy Old Lady by Avram Davidson[3]

“The enemy had seemed a lot farther away in those days”...

Before she became the Crazy Old Lady she had been merely the Old Lady and before that Old Lady Nelson and before that (long long before that) she had been Mrs. Nelson. At one time there had also been a Mr. Nelson, but all that was left of him were the war souvenirs lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece which was never dusted now — the model battleship, the enemy helmet, the enemy grenade, the enemy knife, and some odd bits and pieces that had been enemy badges and buttons.

The enemy had seemed a lot farther away in those days.

But the shopping had been a lot closer.

Of course it was still the same in miles — well, blocks, really — it just seemed like miles now. It had been such a nice walk, such a few blocks’ walk, under the pleasant old trees, past the pleasant old family homes, and down to the pleasant old family stores. Now not much was left of the way it had been.

For one thing, the trees had not had sense enough to adjust to changing times. Their branches had interfered with the electric power lines and their roots had interfered with the sewer lines and their trunks had interfered with the sidewalks.

So most of the old trees had been cut down.

That was quite a shock and no one had prepared the Old Lady for it. One day the old trees had been there as always and then the next day there were only stumps and branches, bruised twigs and leaves and sawdust. And the next day not even that.

A lot of the old family homes had been, so to speak, cut down too, and most of those that had not been cut down had been cut up and converted into multiple dwelling units. It is odd that somehow families do not seem to feel the same about dwelling units as they do about homes.

And as for the pleasant old family stores, what had happened to them? Mr. Berman said, “There’s hardly anything I sell today that they don’t sell for less in the supermarket, Mrs. Nelson. The kids don’t come in the way they used to with a note from their parents, they just come in to steal. I used to think my boy would take over when I’m gone but he came back from Vietnam in a box, so what’s the use of talking.”

Where there had been a lot of storefronts with either changing displays, which were interesting, or the same familiar old displays, which were comforting, now the storefronts were all boarded over.

The supermarket was where there hadn’t been a supermarket — strange that it wasn’t built where all the boarded-up stores were; strange that the pleasant old empty lot with its wild flowers had to give way to the supermarket, and now the children played in the street instead.

But that was the way it was. Prices may have been cheaper in the supermarket in the long run, but the prices had to be paid in cash and there were no deliveries, no monthly bills, no friendly delivery boy who thanked you for a fresh-baked cookie.

Often after Mr. Nelson passed away, the delivery boy — or was it his brother? — would mow the small lawn for a quarter. Now no one would mow the small lawn for a quarter or even for two quarters. No boys were interested in collecting empty bottles for the deposits, the way they used to be. Strange, if they were poor, why they would prefer to smash the bottles on the sidewalk and against the lampposts. The yard was a thicket now and not even a clean thicket.

“What is the world coming to?” the Old Lady used to ask.

By and by she stopped asking and started screeching. “Don’t think I don’t see you there!” she would screech. That was around the time they started calling her the Crazy Old Lady. She said the bigger boys had thrown rocks at her and the bigger boys denied this and the police said they could do nothing.

It wasn’t the police who laughed when she took to wearing the military helmet whenever she did her shopping. She had to go out to do her shopping because it was a thing of the past to phone the store and say, “Now before I even ask about Esther and the new baby, don’t let me forget the quarter pound of sweet butter for my pastry crust.” Sometimes she would forget and call the old number which now belonged to some other people and after a while they weren’t nice about it, not nice at all.

There were, of course, still some other old ladies and old gentlemen around in the old neighborhood, although she didn’t at first think of them as old. “Now my Grandmother Delehanty, she was old and she had seen the soldiers marching off to remember the Maine and she never forgot anyone’s birthday to the last day she lived, but I don’t suppose you would remember her.”

“Listen to the Crazy Old Lady talking to herself,” some girls would say very loud and not nicely at all.

“There, never mind, Mrs. Nelson, pay no attention and we’ll pretend we didn’t notice, shhh,” Mrs. Swift would say, hobbling up.

“Why, Mrs. Swift. Your arm! Your poor arm. What happened?”

“Let’s just walk along together and I’ll tell you when they aren’t listening.”

Mrs. Swift, what a fine-looking woman she had been in her time! Why would anyone want to knock her down so badly that she broke her arm?

“My grocery money was in my purse. I don’t know what to do. I can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

“Oh dear, oh dear.”

It just went to prove how necessary it was to wear the war helmet. If Mr. Schultz had been wearing one, would they have been able to fracture his skull?

They who?

“Why don’t you catch them? What are the police for?”

The policemen said that the descriptions would fit half of the hoodlums in the neighborhood. “More than half,” they said. The policemen said that about the one who killed Mr. Schultz. The policemen said that about the ones who had just grabbed her and pulled the war helmet off her head and then shoved her and had hardly bothered to run away very fast, just half looking back and half laughing. “You got off lucky,” the policeman said to her. “Don’t go out at night if you can help it.”

“It was broad daylight!” she screeched.

And then someone threw a rock through her window. No, it wasn’t a rock, it was the war helmet, her husband’s souvenir from the mantelpiece. How hard they must have worked to dent it and bash it and cave it in so that no one could wear it now. And what was she to do about protection now when she had to go out for the quarter pound of bacon and the box of oatmeal and the three eggs? Where were the police?

“Sorry, lady, sorry,” the policemen said. “You can’t carry no knife this size. It’s against the law.” The knife was her husband’s war souvenir of the enemy, but the police took it away from her anyway.

She wanted to tell Mrs. Swift — what a fine-looking woman she was in her time — and she called out, “Oh, Mrs. Swift,” but her voice didn’t carry. No one heard her over the street noises and the noises of all the radios and record players from every window and all the television sets on full blast. How fast the man was running when he grabbed Mrs. Swift’s purse as though he had practised and practised, and he knocked her down as before and kicked her as she started to get up and then he ran away laughing and laughing with the purse held high up, shielding his face.

What could she do then? No helmet. No knife. And she had to go out shopping. She couldn’t carry much at one time. She looked for the old coat with the inside pocket so she could keep the money in that, but somehow she couldn’t find it and so she had to carry a purse after all.

Carrying the purse with the few dollars in it when the man came running up. She could hear him running and she started screeching when he grabbed her purse, just as she knew he would some day, and he tugged hard and the string broke. The Crazy Old Lady, had she thought tying something with a string to her scrawny old arm would help?

Then something fell to the sidewalk and jangled, a metal ring or pin, and he ran off laughing and faster than she could ever run, the purse held high to shield his face from passers-by as the Crazy Old Lady screeched after him. And he must have got almost half a block away when the enemy grenade went off.

It was well known, of course, that she was crazy, and really they take good care of her where she is, and anyway she can do her little bit of shopping in the canteen, as they call it, and nobody bothers her now at all.